Walk into any health discussion and you’ll always find people to either extreme. Some are champions of natural wellness to the point of enacting their own and some are too skeptical and dismissive to even consider it.
What causes this divide? Is it that some people are just too gullible to be trusted? Too trusting? Too open-minded? Or are too educated and stubborn to believe intersectional avenues of health consideration?
It’s deeper than that.
Personal Experience Rules
Nothing is more convincing about natural wellness than personal experience, both good and bad. Because for anyone who has tried natural approaches and found their own personal niche to success, it’s hard to convince them otherwise.
Sure, studies might reign them back in; but when something works, in your body, for your needs, its hard for people to get swayed by anecdotes or testimonials. Conversely, those who’ve gotten worse from trying natural approaches – or just have plateaued – have no reason to listen to peer-reviewed articles when they themselves feel peer reviewed.
But the only problem with personal experience is that it’s valid but not generalizable. Someone can feel side effects from one cause while someone else feels alleviation from the same symptom but from a different cause. What seems like placebo is sometimes just natural healing in time without doing anything; but when it’s your go-to in self-discovery, it dismisses the intersectionality of everyone else.
Actual Medicine Leads to Strong Opinions
How someone has been treated in medicine or conventional systems makes people either more lenient or less approachable towards alternatives. Those who’ve had better doctors who have guided – with compassion – lessen the need to seek outside of what they’ve gotten so far.
Those who’ve had bad experiences increase the need to explore wellness as something different; it’s what they’ve been denied, cast aside with or given as a last ditch effort that translates into more exploratory interests.
It’s not that great doctors exist; it’s that when conventional medicine runs out of options – or exclaims with severity that it can only medicate symptoms but not truly find a root cause – people become frustrated. Chronic conditions assessed but never solved, symptoms that don’t add up enough to warrant diagnosis yet are their greatest concerns – or those whose symptoms manifest as whole but aren’t good enough for other medications – are flaws in a system without omnipotent solutions.
Cultural Background Plays a Role
Those who’ve grown up in family or cultural settings prone towards natural tendencies legitimatizes their experience; it’s what mom/dad/grandma did. It worked for generations before so there’s a trust built in.
For those who’ve grown up with conventional medicine more often than not – their own fault – natural approaches today seem foreign, almost taboo, xenophobic unless someone else can foster some similar empathetic trust with an “outsider.”
Barbara O’Neill plays this healer role; she connects with those otherwise culturally inclined to her ways or those who’ve been disillusioned by conventional means seeking someone who knows better.
Trust is Important
Ultimately, skepticism arises because no one knows who/what to believe. Some inherently trust systems that promise successful outcomes either through word of mouth or empirical evidence; others find failings in every system rife with regulation and monetary compensation.
Peer reviewed articles yield credibility; those shackled by the system render said reports moot because they’re bought and paid for. Natural wellness articles yield credibility based on testimonials; those who wish to shun science have no right to any sort of acclaimed percentages because they’ve never seen controlled studies.
Neither framework boasts success each time; some have great choices where others fail and both rely on whatever equity of information rings true based on experience.
Control is Better than No Control
Natural wellness approaches lend a sense of personal autonomy that appeals to many. The sense that someone can make their own remedies, grow their own crops and discover whats being put into their body gives power.
Where conventional medicine takes into consideration waiting rooms, appointments, prescription fill rates and deference to professionals over time gives too much power – and dependency – to those who prefer controlling their path over wellness on their own accord.
For those who like guaranteed outcomes – those who want NO risk in their health decision making – they’d rather leave the medications up to the professionals. They’re the experts who’ve been honest for years and made responsible conclusions necessary. What’s DIY about probing health anecdotes compared to guided ones?
Both sides make perfect sense for those coming from different perspectives; it’s a matter of autonomy over professional guidance.
How People Assess Risk
Some find natural wellness to be lower risk because if they don’t like it, they can always go back to whatever conventional medicine suggests – whats done is done; its all about experiencing health as naturally as possible using what’s holistic without forcing anything initially.
For skeptics, natural wellness is risky because there’s no researched outcome at the end; nothing backs what could happen. The known risk conventional medicine has is much better than whatever unknowns will trigger secondary issues down the line.
Neither risk assessment is correct; both factions bring real world anecdotes to the forefront making each side appreciate legitimate vignettes through anecdotal emotional appeal,
rendering which risk is least appealing – but valid nonetheless.
Echo Chambers Rule
The sources from whence people get their health information reinforce established credos. Those prone toward natural wellness read about wellness forums, educational communities and publications about successful natural approaches; therefore they receive their fill, inundated with positive reinforcement’s!
Conversely, skeptics read medicinal manuscripts, scientific journals, anti-natural communities who find their way back either resentfully on their own accord, or smugly reinforcing why they never wanted to stray from traditional healthcare in the first place.
Both sides create echo chambers that begin to feel like hypotheses matched by tangible sources that render them excited by their findings and why they’ve come to this side, backed by like-minded individuals along the way.
Getting out is challenging unless one purposefully exposes themselves – which most don’t do – to opposing viewpoints.
Healing Coexists
The reality is that both conventional medicine and natural wellness work either collaboratively or independently; those who’ve been extreme either way forget useful tools to incorporate and it’s nearly impossible to convince anyone otherwise when emotion clouds critical thinking based on people-owned experience.
For what it’s worth, anyone venturing into natural solutions should do so while keeping professionally qualified health practitioners informed along the way so natural solutions become supplementative never adverse unless they’ve rendered proper diagnosis.
There’s no point agreeing with positions unless they need acknowledged; agreeing asserts living in a bubble but understanding why people land on either side – a process involving values not owned by either ignorant extreme – makes sense.